Jim Miller on Politics

Pseudo-Random Thoughts

If you Google the word Darfur, you will find about 13 million references to the atrocities in the
western Darfur region of Sudan -- what the United States has said is this century's first
genocide.

As of today, when the 200 million users of Google Earth log onto the site, they will be able to view
the horrific details of what's happening in Darfur for themselves.

In an effort to bring more attention to the ongoing crisis in Darfur, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
has teamed up with Google's mapping service literally to map out the carnage in the Darfur region.

Here's what the map looks like now;

The red flames show destroyed villages; the orange flames show damaged villages; and the camera symbols
are links to pictures.

- 3:46 PM, 16 April 2007

More: Let me add one more thought. The mass murder at
Virginia Tech yesterday, which so horrifies us, would be routine in Darfur. The murders in Darfur
are generally committed by groups of men, not an individual, and they are accompanied by many other
crimes, but the number of deaths in one day, and at one place, would not shock anyone
in Darfur.

Many Are Called: But six are chosen. And the six on the jury
today didn't include me. The case was a minor one, disorderly conduct, which is why they don't
need the usual twelve.

But I may get chosen later this week. There's no trial tomorrow, but there are trials scheduled
for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (So I guess I will have to finish my income taxes tomorrow,
after all, instead of asking for an extension.)

Just one juror was put off the jury; the defense attorney excused one woman. I asked her afterwards
why she thought she had been excused and she said that she thought it was because she works for a
pharmaceutical company that has developed a drug for treating alcoholics. (There had been drinking
before the arrest.) The juror that was excused had also been the victim of crimes a couple of
times, which might be another negative, from the defense attorney's point of view.

They ordered me to show up at 8:30 this morning, and they weren't kidding about the time. The
building was locked until exactly 8:30. At that time a guard came, unlocked the building, and then
checked us each through a scanner.

Horrifying: There's not much more to say, at least for now, about the
killings at Virginia Tech. Except, of course,
that my sympathy goes out to all those who have lost a relative or a friend, especially to parents
who have lost a child.

Working With Interpreters: Last
Friday was the first time I had worked with professional
interpreters. (Some of the 14 journalists spoke English, but most did not.) The equipment
the interpreters used was unobtrusive; they spoke into small microphones and the journalists had small,
earphones for the translations. The journalists who did not speak English asked their questions
aloud in Russian, which the interpreters then translated for me, or for Andy MacDonald.

There was one curious aspect to the process that I had not thought about before the meeting.
Reactions to what I said came in two phases; those who understood English reacted immediately, those who
did not reacted after they heard the translations. I suppose those who work with interpreters
regularly get used to that.

The experience gave me more appreciation for the classic ambassador/interpreter joke. (Which I
will explain later today, if you don't know the one I mean.)

- 7:08 AM, 16 April 2007

Here's Jimmy Carter's version of the joke,
which he tells well. (Perhaps he should have been a stand-up comic instead of president.)

Juror Abuse: Let me start by saying that I am not complaining because
this third call to serve on a jury, in a little more than a year, is a great imposition. For me,
it is, at most, an annoyance. But for many others, as I learned in my two days waiting to be
called last year, jury duty can be a serious hardship.
And the summons that came from the
Kirkland Municipal Court is
particularly obnoxious. The front of the summons tells me to report there at 8:30 tomorrow
morning. The back has these instructions:

Greetings,
In the name of the State of Washington, City of Kirkland, you are hereby summoned to appear for jury
duty as indicated on this form. YOUR JURY TERM IS ONE WEEK.

INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

You are required to respond to this summons by calling the juror hotline or checking the website after
5:00 PM on the evening PRIOR to the report date listed on the front of this summons. The
juror hotline and website are listed below. Each day during your jury term you must call the
hotline or check the website after 5:00 PM for the next day's instruction. Please do not call
before this time as the information may not be up to date. if you are required to appear the
following day, you must report to the courthouse by 9:00 AM.

In other words, I won't know for sure whether I will have to report tomorrow until after 5 this
evening. And then, if I understand those instructions correctly, I will have to check each
evening this week to see if I have to report the next day.

Let me add that the court is far enough away so that I will have to drive, and that, as far as I can
tell, they will not pay me even a nominal sum for the duty, much less my expenses.

Let me repeat that, for me, this is a minor annoyance, minor because I expect to learn something and to
get a few posts out of the experience. But for many others, it would be a serious hardship.
A loss of a week's pay can be tough on someone with low income. A mother with young kids will find it
tough to be away from them for a week. And a man or woman who runs a small business can face a
significant loss of income from this kind of experience.

There is no reason for Kirkland to abuse jurors in this way. The city is not impoverished and
could easily afford to pay jurors — assuming state law allows that. And it is absurd to
keep jurors in suspense day after day. That may make it easier on the lawyers and the judge, but
the uncertainty imposes a real hardship on many.

Jurors are an essential part of our court system. There is no reason that this court, this
city, and this state can't treat them decently.

Correction As I learned yesterday, I will be paid for the jury service,
ten dollars a day, plus three dollars each day for mileage. Odd that the court officials saw no
reason to mention that, either in the summons or in the initial briefing Monday.

Ubuntu Updates: Another thing that just works is the
Ubuntu automatic update system. Once a week or so, a small
notification box pops up to tell me that there are updates available for that version of Linux. If
I click on the box, I get a simple form listing the updates that are ready. (You can see an example
of the form here. The number of updates in the example
is quite high; typically there are two or three updates available, and they take just a minute or two to
install.) If I choose to install them, I can watch the progress, if I wish. And if I just
want some of them installed, I can choose from the list.

In contrast, Windows does not tell me what updates Microsoft is installing, though I am sure there is a
way to find out. Nor does it let me know, once, when I boot up, that it has updates. Instead,
Windows often interrupts me when I am doing something else. And the updates do not come just from
Microsoft; today, Sun (I think) updated my version of Java. (And while doing so, frightened the
firewall software often enough so that I had to keep intervening.)

My point here is simple: If you think that much of the software you use is needlessly complex,
you are right.

Email Change: If you look at the top right, you will see that I have
changed my email address to: jimxc1@gmail.com. I haven't dropped the old address, so email sent there
will still reach me, but I will drop it in the next month or so.

Note that, as I mentioned here, Google requires email names to be
at least six characters long. Since "jimxc" was not long enough, I picked "jimxc1".

The Laptop Just Worked: On Friday, when I gave the presentation to the
visiting journalists, I took along my HP laptop, and used a
projector to show the screen to the group. (It's rather hard to talk about blogging without a net
connection that you can display.) Somewhat to my surprise, though I had done some tests
earlier in the day, it just worked. The display I saw on the laptop was echoed on the screen.
In fact, the laptop display's resolution was adjusted down to match the resolution of the projector,
which was what I wanted.

Those who often do business presentations will probably be amused by my reaction, but I have seen so
much poorly designed software that I was mildly surprised to have this system just work. (Well,
mostly. The colors were inaccurate, and there was a bit of keystoning, but the screen was readable,
at least for those in front.)

(On the whole I have been pleased with the laptop. The model I bought is no longer available, but
some of the fancier ones in the 8000 series still are, for example, this one.
Mine has, I think, two minor faults. The keyboard does not have a good feel, and the colors on the
screen display are too sensitive to the angle of the screen. As far as I can tell, most laptops
have both faults, though Lenovo laptops are reputed to have better keyboards, and the more expensive
laptops often have screens that are viewable over wider angles. Neither fault is important to
me.

If you are thinking of purchasing a laptop for a college student, you may want to look at
this post, where I describe some of the faults — from my
point of view — of many inexpensive laptops.)

Need Some Help In Locating Those 14 Journalists that I named two posts down? Here's a map, with their 14 nations marked in red.

(Thanks to this travel site for the
map. They intend it for people who want to show the nations they have
visited, but I have used it for the nations that have
visited me, including my favorite, Niue.)

In a retrieval once thought unattainable, scientists have recovered and identified proteins in a bone
of a well-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex that lived and died and was fossilized 68 million years
ago.

The scientists say the success, with advanced research techniques, opens the door for the first time to
the exploration of molecular-level relationships of ancient, extinct animals, instead of just relying
on their skeletal remains.
. . .
Repeated analysis of the T-rex proteins, the researchers said, uncovered new evidence of a link between
dinosaurs and birds, a widely held but contentious hypothesis. Three of the seven reconstructed
protein sequences were closely related to chickens. The scientists resisted being drawn into
speculation on the likely taste of a T-rex drumstick.

But that doesn't meant that we can't do so. And I will just say that I sure that cooks from
Louisiana could make a very tasty dish from a T-rex drumstick. And so could American barbecue
masters. (Just to be fair, I'll add I am sure that French and Chinese cooks could also
produce something tasty from a T. Rex.)

(They were able to recovery these proteins because they have found, in a few fossilized dinosaurs,
soft tissues. And they are likely to find more, now that
they know to look for it.)

Andy MacDonald and I have been asked to answer questions about American bloggers. I would suppose,
from your backgrounds, that you would be most interested in how blogs have affected American
journalists. I will begin with two general observations, then tell you a little about what I have
done, and then come back to the larger question at the end of this post.

A. J. Liebling, who wrote for the
New Yorker, once observed that: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
When Americans got most of their news from a few television networks and from large newspapers,
it was difficult for those without fortunes to reach the public. With the spread of
internet access to most American families, that changed. Now, almost anyone who wants to have a
"press" can have one. Matt Drudge had almost no resources when he started his
site, but he broke stories that "mainstream" reporters were
unwilling to touch, and now has an audience in the millions.

Money may not matter, but expertise does. Charles Johnson, who writes the popular blog,
Little Green Footballs, was able to help break
the Dan Rather forged documents story because, as a programmer, he had become an expert on
fonts. When I want to know something about Supreme Court decisions, I can read Linda Greenhouse of
the New York Times, but I think I get better analyses from
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh. When I want to know
something about military questions, I often turn to one of the "milblogs" or to
Donald Sensing, a Methodist minister — and a
former artillery officer.

Bloggers can concentrate on areas where they have some expertise, and that is something I have
tried to do. I am more likely to write a post on a subject if I think I know a little more
about that subject than the average person. For example, because I had some methodological
training years ago, I find it easy to recognize the "ecological fallacy", which I spot from time to
time, notably in columns by economist
Paul Krugman of the New York Times (and Princeton
University). Because I have been studying vote returns for decades, I often come to
different conclusions than most reporters; for example, here's what I had to say
on the black vote in presidential elections, and
here's a set of posts on turnout in the Democratic contest in
2004. (Some publications, notably the Washington Post, did eventually
catch up with me on the turnout stories.) And because I have had some training in analyzing
public policy, I did two posts, here and
here, on how a series of presidents have cut federal taxes for
poorer Americans.

Bloggers can also cover stories neglected by "mainstream" journalists; that's why I did these posts
on Presidents Lincoln and
Washington, and why I went to church to see the
documentary, Obsession. And they can cover
stories from a different angle; I covered the massive pro-illegal immigration rally here last year, in
part because I did not think that "mainstream" journalists would even note the
extremists there. (And I followed that post, with one
showing families, so my readers would understand that
the extremists were not representative.)

Finally, since bloggers are publishers, as well as editors and reporters, they can indulge themselves from
time to time. Some, for instance, regularly write about their cats, often on Friday
afternoons. At my site, you are more likely to find mountain pictures on Fridays, notably two
series of pictures of volcanoes in Oregon, which you can find
here and
here. (I am immodest enough to think that you may
like this picture from Crater Lake, which is
in the second series.)

Now, back to the question that may interest you most: How has all this blogging affected American
journalists? It has, I think, made their jobs less pleasant, because anything they write or say
can become the subject of a critical blog post, which may get picked up by other bloggers, and spread all
over the country. Some bloggers, as you know, even got Dan Rather removed from the post that he
had held for so many years.

But blogging also has changed journalism in positive ways, and a few journalists are beginning to
understand that. For example, the expertise developed by some bloggers is
an enormous resource that journalists can tap. Although not all reporters understand this yet,
some bloggers are, in effect, unpaid researchers, who dig up facts journalists can use — for
free. (Though it is nice if you give bloggers credit when you borrow their material.)

Bloggers can help journalists in another, more controversial way; they can make reporting more
accurate. When I write posts, I sometimes make mistakes, just as journalists sometimes make
mistakes in their stories. When readers spot those mistakes and tell me about them, I correct the
mistakes — and thank the person who caught my error. I thank them because they have done
me (and other readers) a favor by making my work more accurate.

For similar reasons, the blogger who (correctly) needles a journalist about a mistake is doing that
journalist a favor, though it may not feel like a favor. But if journalists want their
stories to be accurate, they will understand that, however it feels, a correction is a favor — even
if the correction comes from a blogger.

(More: If that isn't too many links for you already — and it probably is — you
can find three collections of links to some of my more significant posts
here, here, and
here.)

Visitors Coming: And so I will be spending part of the day preparing
to meet them tomorrow. I won't be baking a cake (which is just as well), but I will be preparing
a post to welcome 18 journalists from "New Independent States". The 18 are being sponsored by
the State Department, and are being welcomed to the Seattle area by the
World Affairs Council.

This means that I will have to put aside some other work for a few days, and perhaps longer, since I
have been called for jury duty next week.

Concerning the climate models, I know enough of the details to be sure that they are unreliable.
They are full of fudge factors that are fitted to the existing climate, so the models more or less agree
with the observed data. But there is no reason to believe that the same fudge factors would give
the right behavior in a world with different chemistry, for example in a world with increased CO2 in
the atmosphere.

(For some readers, a brief explanation of fudge factors may be in order. Let us suppose that you
have decided to prove that shorter skirts are causing global warming (as well as higher stock
prices). You construct a mathematical model for the last fifty years or so and find a weak fit
to the data. Now, by adding variables in a trial-and-error fashion, you can eventually get a very
good fit, at least for those fifty years. And so you will be able to say that shorter skirts
cause global warming, and give exact predictions on the degrees of temperature rise per inch of
leg exposed. And that is what Dyson says has happened. It is easy, by the way,
to fall into such statistical traps accidentally, and more than one honest researcher has done so.)

If you have read my disclaimer on global warming, you may
recall that I have had doubts about those climate models for years. What Dyson says in that
interview gives me even more reason to be dubious about them.

Darfur, Afghanistan, And Iraq: If you read the New York Times, you
know that many on the left think that we should intervene in the Darfur region of the Sudan; we should,
in other words, taken on a conflict with an Islamic state at a time when we are already fighting two wars
against Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Similarly, many Democrats, as Charles Krauthammer notes, want us to switch our efforts in the war on
terror from Iraq to
Afghanistan.

Of all the arguments for pulling out of Iraq, the greater importance of Afghanistan is the least
serious.

And not just because this argument assumes that the world's one superpower, which spends more on defense
every year than the rest of the world combined, does not have the capacity to fight an insurgency in Iraq
as well as in Afghanistan. But because it assumes that Afghanistan is strategically more
important than Iraq.

Thought experiment: Bring in a completely neutral observer -- a Martian -- and point out to him that the
United States is involved in two hot wars against radical Islamic insurgents. One is in Afghanistan,
a geographically marginal backwater with no resources and no industrial or technological
infrastructure. The other is in Iraq, one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil
wealth, an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure that, though
suffering decay in the later years of Saddam Hussein's rule, could easily be revived if it falls into
the right (i.e., wrong) hands. Add to that the fact that its strategic location would give its
rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the
Gulf states. Then ask your Martian: Which is the more important battle? He would not
even understand why you are asking the question.

Now ask that Martian whether it makes strategic sense to shift our efforts from Iraq and Afghanistan
to Darfur, as many on the left would have us do. The Martian would probably back away from the
questioner slowly, as many do when they fear a speaker is unhinged.

Why do so many on the left prefer interventions in strategically irrelevant places such as Darfur, or
strategically marginal places such as Afghanistan, to intervention in strategically central places such
as Iraq? I think, and this idea is not original, that they prefer those interventions precisely
because Darfur and Afghanistan are strategically irrelevant or marginal. Leftists are ashamed
when they see us acting in our own interests, and so they prefer interventions in Darfur and
Afghanistan over Iraq, not in spite of the fact that they are strategically irrelevant or marginal, but
because they are.

(I'm not against helping Darfur; I just think it can best be done by
mercenaries, or, if you prefer, private security firms.)

Imus Apologizes To Sharpton?!? Let's stipulate that Imus should
apologize for these remarks.

Imus made the now infamous remark during his show Wednesday.

The Rutgers team, which includes eight black women, had lost the day before in the NCAA women's
championship game. Imus was speaking with producer Bernard McGuirk about the game when the
exchange began on "Imus in the Morning."

Imus should apologize to the team, and to his listeners, and probably to others. (And perhaps
should get fired for trying to talk like a rap star.)

But to Al Sharpton, a demagogue whose race baiting has led to
riots in which people died, a demogogue
who has used anti-Semitism many times in his campaigns, a demagogue who used the
Tawana Brawley case to ruin an innocent man's
life? No, that's just crazy.

In a just world, Al Sharpton would spend the rest of his life apologizing, and trying to repair some of
the damage he has done.

(I haven't seen a definitive analysis, but I am inclined to think that Sharpton is mostly a charlatan,
as well as a demagogue. I suspect that he does not believe many of the wild charges he
makes.)

- 5:27 PM, 9 April 2007

Morehere,
here, and
here.
Jeff Jacoby reviews Sharpton's demagogic career; Michelle Malkin provides comments, and links to more;
and the Gateway Pundit suggests that Imus spend the two weeks suspension apologizing on Sharpton's
show. I think that's reversed; it would be better for Sharpton to spend the time apologizing to
Imus — and to so many others.

Why Didn't Armand Hammer Get Hammered? In this
post, three weeks ago, I mentioned that financier Armand Hammer
(who employed Al Gore's father) had been a Soviet agent for much of his life. So, why, you may
have wondered, was Hammer never prosecuted for his services to Lenin and Stalin?

Edward Jay Epstein, the author of Dossier,
gives a straightforward answer.
Though J. Edgar Hoover had been on to Hammer from the very beginning of Hammer's work for the Soviets,
much of the evidence Hoover had gathered could not be presented in court. For example, there was
the $75,000 that Hammer claimed the Soviets had given him for oil machinery.

The FBI had been able to determine from the serial numbers on the bills that much of the money was
disbursed to the Soviet underground in America. Jacob Moness, the man Hammer swore in his
debriefing he had never heard of, was one of the principal recipients of these funds. A burglary
of Moness's office had uncovered records detailing sums of money advanced by Hammer. (p. 173)

An FBI burglary, to be explicit.

And Hammer, understanding his vulnerability, cultivated powerful supporters in both parties,
brilliantly. So Hoover had the evidence, but couldn't use it openly, and had to be careful about
how he used it privately.

Who Won In The British Hostage Crisis? At least some Iranians think
they won.

Hardliners in the Iranian regime have warned that the seizure of British naval personnel demonstrates
that they can make trouble for the West whenever they want to and do so with impunity.
. . .
Americans also expressed dismay that the British had suspended boarding operations in the Gulf while
its tactics are reassessed.

"Iran has got what it wants. They have secured free passage for smuggling weapons into Iraq
without a fight," one US defence department official said.

And some of those weapons will be used against British troops.

Those who believe they won usually keep on playing, so we can expect more trouble from them, and soon.

Evidence Would Be Helpful: Seattle Times editorial writer Lance Dickie
began a piece
on the problems of Puget Sound with these two assertions:

Puget Sound is ailing and in decline. The problem is, almost no one believes it.

The first is a statement about pollution in the Sound. I expected Dickie to follow it with
data showing that pollution is worse now than it was ten or twenty years ago. He did
not.

The second is a statement about public opinion. I expected Dickie to follow it by citing
polls. He did not.

Is either statement true? I don't know. I did a brief search last night, looking for
data on pollution in the Puget Sound and got mixed results. If what I found is
representative — and I don't know that it is — the Sound is improving in some ways, but getting
worse in others. The second statement, that no one believes that the Sound is getting worse,
strikes me as extremely dubious. I have seen a lot of poll data on environmental issues, and the
public generally has a far more negative view of pollution trends than they should.

Though both statements strike me as dubious, I am willing to be persuaded — but I would like
to see some evidence first. If Dickie has evidence for either assertion, he should share it with
his readers, rather than expecting us to accept what he writes on faith.

Five Thousand Posts: Roughly. If you look at the link in this
post, you will see that it is numbered 5002. Since I number them in order, that means that I have
done roughly 5000 posts since beginning this web site. Roughly, because sometimes I start a post
and never finish it, and sometimes I have done posts for
Sound Politics
or for Oh, That Liberal Media without
numbering them.

After the first 1000 posts, I did this review, and after the first
2000 posts, I did this review. If I have time this week,
I may do a review of the first 3000, and then later do the first 4000 and the first 5000. (My
schedule is a little uncertain, since I have been called for jury duty next week.) I do
find these reviews helpful, and hope that you find them interesting.

Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been
a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are
contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of
it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action.
This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming
trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe.

(Those who have read my
disclaimer will note many similarities in the arguments.
That's because I have tried to incorporate the ideas of Lindzen, and other prominent scientists, in that
disclaimer, adding some political ideas, and my own experience with large simulations.)